The gist of it is, if you’ve installed Mac OS X and you use Homebrew, you’ll be pleased to note that you’re just a brew install away for getting a working MariaDB. Yes, that’s right, simply do: brew install mariadb and that’s it — you’ll have MariaDB (currently 5.2.6) installed in no time. For further documentation and a step-by-step guide, visit the Knowledgebase article: Building MariaDB on Mac OS X using Homebrew.

If you run Debian or Ubuntu, and want a way to auto-generate a sources.list entry, then you should definitely look at: Setting up Repositories for Ubuntu/Debian. Its very simple: choose a distribution, then a release, then choose what version of MariaDB you would like to track and a mirror of your choice, and voila! it generates the sources.list for you.